The pair, when needed for use, are exhibited in the first instance as one only, the one within the other. The professedly single pot, after being proved empty by exhibiting the interior and passing the hand through it, is made into two, by simply drawing out the inner one. The duplication is not presented as a trick, the modus operandi being self-evident, but it has a pretty effect, and the exhibiting of the two pots as one in the first instance admits of the presence, within the outer one, of a secret pocket, open at top, as depicted in Fig. 7, but folding down, when not in use, flat against its side.[2]
Fig. 7
The main object of this pocket is to enable the performer to “vanish” a card. The card to be got rid of is dropped ostensibly into the flower-pot, or rather, the pot being bottomless, through it on to the table, where, when the pot is lifted, the spectators naturally expect to see it. It has however disappeared, having in fact been dropped into the pocket, where it remains concealed. Two, or even three cards may on occasion be dealt with in the same way. By covering the pocket with the fingers in the act of picking up the pot, the interior of the latter may be freely shown after their disappearance.
The pocket, previously loaded accordingly (though the flower-pot is shown, to all appearance, empty), may also be used for the production of a card or cards.
[2] It is extremely difficult to construct the “pots” so that the pocket is workable on the concave inner surface, but if they are made four, five or six-sided the pocket folds against a flat surface and works perfectly.—Ed.
PATTER APPROPRIATE TO THE FAIRY FLOWER-POTS
The flower-pots may be introduced as follows:
“Permit me to call your attention to one of my latest improvements. Conjurers have a foolish fancy, as I dare say you have noticed, for borrowing other people’s hats. If a conjurer wants to collect money from the air, he collects it in a hat. If he wants to make an omelette, he cooks it in a hat. If he wants to hatch a few chickens, he does it in a hat. And, for fear of accidents, he never uses his own hat, but always borrows somebody else’s. It’s very wrong of us. As Sir William Gilbert says, about some other forms of crime,
‘It’s human nature, P’raps. If so,